[ANY23-71] improve the current CLI engine

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.7.0
• Fix Version/s: 0.7.0
• Component/s: core
• Assignee: Michele Mostarda
• Reporter: Simone Tripodi
• Created: 01/Apr/12 18:31
• Updated: 25/Jun/12 16:54
• Resolved: 03/Apr/12 09:40

Description

Actual CLI - even if nicely working - can be improved in therms of of both internal architecture and user interface.
I see two main "issues" on current CLI:

• on UI, the CLI exposes internal details, since the ToolRunner requires the classname of the tool has to be executed;
• on internals, each Tool has to parse the the chunk of the command line, which can be automated.

So my proposal is to automate, via the already working plugins discovery, the CLI arguments parsing AND implementing a svn/git commands-based alike interface.

My preferred choice for that is JCommande because:

• it allows binding CLI arguments to Java properties via Annotations - no more manual parsing;
• it already supports a complex syntax to implement commands;
• commands aliases can be expressed via annotations - no more needs to expose internals;

Patch with proposal is coming

Issue Links

• relates to: ANY23-64 Improve CLI uage aesthetics